


grip

by remaya



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Familiars, Harry is supposed to be Tom's familiar, M/M, Spooky, but neither of them are good at relationships, tags will be added as we progress, that might be an understatement
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26823952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remaya/pseuds/remaya
Summary: Unfortunately for Tom Riddle, Harry refuses to stay replaced.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 35
Kudos: 206





	1. witching hour

**Author's Note:**

> what is this, you ask, eyeing my other wips ~which i am working on~? it’s a super spooky fic for a super spooky month of writing server exercises that all LACE INTO ONE FIC  
> yeah that's right the next few chapters are taking sips of my post-apocalyptic radiation water.
> 
> \--also we’re gonna assume that tom’s ritual won’t be detected by the Trace, because the magic is contained in the circle  
> \--also also tom is less rash than canon here and decided that horcruxes were too risky. he doesn’t have horcruxes… for now… he does have notes on them though

Tom rises and brushes chalk-dust off of his knees. It’s unfortunate that he still has two months to wait before his seventeenth birthday; his wand could have saved him hours of painstaking measurements. It will be worth it, Tom reminds himself, and it would not do to be caught practicing magic at Wool’s, especially during Samhain, with so little time left until he’s free of the Trace.

The one advantage of the orphanage is that even if Dumbledore suspected Abraxas’ cover story to be a lie, he’d never assume that Tom would willingly return to this grim, run-down place. In any other circumstance, he’d be right.

But this ritual is special.

“Seven minutes ‘til witching hour,” Harry tells him brightly. He’s sitting at the foot of Tom’s bed, which is pushed into the wall to make room for the intricate circle of runes Tom’s drawn on the floorboards. His face is shadowed since the wavering moonlight doesn’t reach his corner, but his voice is so upbeat that Tom can picture the naïve, optimistic expression he must be wearing. “This is fun! I’m glad that I’m your familiar, I bet Malfoy's doing boring pureblood things. How long until we don’t have to hide anymore? Your birthday’s in December, right?”

“You won’t have to hide anymore after today, actually,” Tom says, smiling at Harry’s resulting delight. “Come here, Harry. Be careful, don’t smudge anything.” 

Harry hops off of the bed and skirts around the circle eagerly. “What are we doing?”

“Give me your hand,” Tom says, and Harry holds it out, willing and immediate. Harry’s been like this-- too giving, too trusting, too _meek_ \-- ever since he’d manifested last month, earlier than any familiar should have, since Tom hadn’t yet been of age. Tom had initially hidden Harry’s existence because he couldn’t afford anyone knowing a potential weakness; and then, Harry’s weak behavior had continued, and Tom just couldn’t accept that _this_ is what magic thought his familiar should be, much less present Harry to his followers as his equal.

It’s a pity. Harry is pleasing to look at and somewhat potent in magic, and if he had a bit more fire, then Tom would have been happy to keep him.

“Tom? What are we doing?” Harry asks again, a slight edge-- fear?-- to his voice as Tom brings the edge of an ornate silver knife to his palm. 

“I just need a bit of your blood, to help power the runes,” Tom soothes him. He lifts the blade away and strokes the inside of Harry’s wrist with the thumb of the hand that’s holding Harry’s in place, looking up to meet Harry’s tense gaze. “It’ll be quick, I promise."

“Oh, okay,” Harry agrees, relaxing. “You know you can draw on my magic anytime. I’ll help with whatever you need.”

“I know,” Tom says, pleased, and he makes three swift, precise cuts across the center of Harry’s palm. 

Harry sucks in a pained, surprised breath. The incisions-- in the shape of a jagged lightning bolt-- are mirrored from his palm onto his forehead. “Ow…”

“Shh, don’t touch it,” Tom says. “The knife just draws your magic from where it’s concentrated the most. Put your palm here.”

“On the sowilo?”

“Yes.”

Harry does so, heedless of getting chalk in his cut. The lightning bolt rune glows, and Harry sags, his energy draining out of him.

“Tha’ssa lotta magic,” Harry slurs, slumping into Tom’s side.

“Yes, Samhain rituals require more energy,” Tom says, picking him up and crossing to the center of the ritual circle to lay him down. “Rest.”

“Hmm…?” Harry squirms out of the position Tom had arranged him in, pushing himself up. “Tom? Why’re we… why am I in the circle?”

Tom steps out of the circle. The runes are now easily outshining the faint moonlight from the window, casting shadows across Tom’s old room.

“Tom?” Harry shakes himself to clear the grogginess. He crawls over and presses up against the edge of the circle. “Tom, what are we doing? Why can’t I get out?” he asks, with more and more urgency. His questions peter out as Tom doesn’t pay him any attention, wiping off the silver knife on a cloth. “Are you… are you going to let me out?”

Tom puts the silver knife down in its case, and picks up a different one. He strides to the north side of the circle, slices his palm neatly, and presses the wound to the eihwaz rune there.

“What are you doing?” Harry starts banging on the barrier trapping him inside the ritual circle, his confusion and concern and fright turning to anger. Tom looks up with brief interest; he almost hadn’t thought Harry capable of anger, meek as he was. “Let me out! It’s the _ritual,_ isn’t it, the one in Malfoy’s book-- you promised me you wouldn’t!”

“And you promised me that you would help with whatever I need,” Tom replies, calm. “This is what I need: a familiar worthy of me. And you are helping me get them.” 

“You can’t--” Harry cries, but he doesn’t finish his sentence because the clock strikes witching hour, the runes flare, and the rest of his words are swallowed in a cacophony of sound and light.

Tom has been hearing the words _you can’t_ for as long as he can remember-- from Mrs Cole, _you can’t amount to anything_ ; from Dumbledore, _you can’t stay at Hogwarts over break_ ; from books saying _you can’t live forever_ ; and from Abraxas, _you can’t do that ritual, Tom, you really can’t!_ From the mouth of the familiar he’s never respected, _you can’t_ isn’t particularly impactful.

Tom blinks away the dark spots in his vision after the chaos fades. In the circle, the only part of Harry that is left is a bundle of clothes, and then those are pushed aside by an emerging snake.

Tom scuffs the chalk of the ritual circle with his shoe to break the barrier so he can approach. He kneels and holds out a hand for the snake to taste.

“ _Master,_ ” she hisses with approval, slithering up Tom’s arm with a rasp of her scales sliding across the floorboards. She’s heavy, but Tom likes it.

“ _What are you called?”_

 _“Nagini._ ”

“Good,” Tom decides, smiling genuinely this time.

A bone-chilling blast of wind sweeps in from the window, knocking the chalk and Tom’s wand off of the nightstand. The blankets and pillow are flung to the floor; the two knives, one still in its case, are hurled at Nagini. Before he knows what he’s doing, Tom throws himself on top of his new familiar, his back to the blades.

The knives drop to the ground with a clatter. The wind stops. Tom recalls closing the window before starting the ritual. 

A wail of _“how could you?”_ echoes over whispers of _“I must be cursed to fail twice._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally abraxas: i got the replace-your-familiar ritual you wanted but DON’T USE IT  
> abraxas:  
> abraxas:  
> abraxas: shit


	2. one eye, are you awake?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title comes from [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Eye,_Two-Eyes,_and_Three-Eyes)

Nagini drapes herself across Tom’s shoulders while he wipes the chalk of the ritual circle off of the floorboards, boxes up his chalk and knives and cloth, and moves his furniture back into place.

“ _Your old familiar…”_ she hisses, shifting at every shadow the moonlight throws across the walls. She tightens her coils around Tom.

“What?” Tom snaps, because Nagini constricts in fright at every little thing. She’s powerful, and has bite, and yet the threat of meek, inadequate Harry, who could never match her, unsettles her. Figures that Harry is hindering Tom’s plans even after Tom finally got rid of him. “Harry’s gone. The ritual made sure of it. That last trick of his was a fluke, right before he dissipated for good.”

“ _Yes…”_ Nagini says dubiously, twining the tip of her dangling tail once around Tom’s neck, careful not to choke him.

“We’re to return to Hogwarts soon,” Tom informs her, gathering his box and wand and coin pouch. “We’ll take the Knight Bus. You don’t get motion sickness, do you?”

“ _No,_ ” Nagini says. Her head jerks towards a corner of the room, and her body tenses. “ _He’s--_ ”

Tom sighs. She’ll get over her fear soon. He doesn’t see Harry’s flickering image raise a finger to his lips and wink at Nagini.

* * *

Abraxas pales dramatically when he arrives at the dorms after the Halloween Feast to see Tom absent Harry. 

“This is Nagini,” Tom tells him, and Abraxas’ mouth presses into a thin line, but he’s smart enough not to comment.

* * *

Tom’s dreams that night are a mess of fractured scenes. 

Eventually, he visits the Chamber of Secrets even though he’d closed it for good last year. When he commands Salazar Slytherin’s statue to summon the basilisk, its eyes are shrouded in an eerie green mist. Nagini slithers in instead of the basilisk, but she’s the size of one; he tries vaguely to convince her she should shrink, and then mid-sentence she convulses, falling to the ground and writhing in such a violent manner that the Chamber starts collapsing.

“This is a dream,” Tom realizes, frustrated at himself for not recognizing the hazy, unreal quality of his situation sooner. He rolls his eyes, his adrenaline fading, and wills everything to stop.

Everything doesn’t stop. Tom hasn’t lost control of a dream in years. With the shock of this, he loses his footing and his lucidity. The green mist is back, twining through the Chamber, coalescing into thick strands that dive into Nagini’s gaping, frothing mouth.

Tom, frozen, can only watch as Nagini stiffens, mist steaming from the cracks between her scales, and snaps around to lunge at him. Her unhinged jaws nearly swallow his head.

He wakes in a cold sweat.

“Strange,” he muses to himself, willing his heart to slow. He turns his head slightly to the side; Nagini is awake.

“ _Tom?_ ” Nagini hisses, a tentative quality to the sound.

“Why are you awake?” Tom asks. The details of his dream fade, overtaken by his concern for his new familiar. “Get some rest.”

“ _I…_ ” Nagini’s scales rasp together-- she must be moving into a more comfortable position. She nudges up against Tom’s side.

“If it’s Harry you’re worried about, don’t be,” Tom says.

“Why would she worry about _me?_ ”

Tom bolts upright. In a split second, he whips his wand out from under his pillow and levels it at the apparition at the foot of his bed. Nagini rears up, emitting an alarmed, raw growling sound.

The thing that’s taken Harry’s appearance smiles, his silhouette wavering.

“Familiars don’t become ghosts,” Tom says, measured.

“And wizards aren’t usually dumb enough to use that ritual,” Harry counters. “What else is new?” He talks over Tom’s protest. “I’m not a ghost. Can’t you feel our bond? You almost ripped it apart, but I failed you so badly that you couldn’t even do that right.”

Nagini is shivering beside Tom on the bed. Tom keeps his wand pointed at the apparition, and feels out the ragged edges of the bond. There… there is a tenuous, gossamer-thin strand of bond-magic, connecting him to it. Tom had been too focused on his new bond to Nagini to notice.

“Harry wouldn’t talk over me,” Tom observes at last. “What are you?”

“An idiot, for thinking that giving you everything I had would be better than what I did to Cedric,” Harry replies. He settles on the bed under Tom and Nagini’s wary distrust, a grin stretching across his face. Something about the expression seems… off, but Tom can’t pinpoint what it is. “Aren’t you going to sleep?”

“What are you?” Tom repeats. His wand arm is steady, but Nagini shakes next to him when Harry turns his eerie green gaze on her.

“Has Tom been kind to you?” Harry inquires, his tone sickeningly sweet and his grin widening. “He has, hasn’t he. He was kind to me, too, in the beginning, but it was just an act. He’ll drop you and feel nothing for it if you’re not strong, if you’re not _enough._ He did it to me.”

“Leave,” Tom says with force. His spells pass harmlessly through Harry. One singes his canopy.

Harry sighs again and refocuses on Tom; Nagini presses closer to Tom’s side. “You didn’t even give me a chance,” Harry mourns, dropping the grin, to Tom’s secret relief. “My fault, for thinking that it’d be better if I just agreed with you on everything-- if I just helped Cedric more when he asked, maybe he wouldn’t have been killed... or perhaps it’s your fault. I haven’t decided yet.” He flops backwards onto the bed, his face still turned toward Tom. “Nagini hasn’t slept _all_ night. You should take better care of your familiar.”

“You can’t do anything to us,” Tom bluffs, to gauge Harry’s reaction.

“Hmm,” Harry muses, “is that it? I would have thought you’d have something more productive to say. I just threatened you, you know. It could be that I didn’t make it clear enough.” His gaze pins Tom to the headboard. “I’ll be waiting for you to dream.”

“I have Occlumency,” Tom says. 

Harry seems to ignore that altogether, studying him with interest. “We could have been a good pair,” he says, at length.

“No, we couldn’t have,” Tom grits out. The only one who doesn’t seem to feel the tension in the air is Harry, or his apparition, as it may be, and Tom can’t dismantle his privacy spells to get his dorm mates’ help because he can’t afford them questioning him about Harry. Harry has him helpless and cornered, knowing nothing about what Harry’s actually capable of in this state. 

If Harry decides on revenge, Tom isn’t sure what he could do. He’s not even sure what Harry is capable of. He hadn’t planned for this eventuality at all.

He hadn’t expected anything like this from Harry, when he’d already deemed Harry weak.

“You can’t stay awake forever,” Harry taunts; his small, transparent figure is barely visible now, fading quickly. Soon, he’s disappeared.

“ _Tom…”_ Nagini says, uncertain.

Tom only lowers his wand when it seems that Harry has truly gone. Then, he says to Nagini, “Yes?”

Nagini lunges upward, her jaws unhinging and enlarging and he can’t react fast enough, the only things he can register the gleam of reflected green off of her fangs and the black of her gullet--

Tom wakes to someone shaking his shoulder. He has Abraxas thrown to the floor with his wand jabbing towards his throat before he’s even fully aware that it’s day. His canopy has been pulled aside, and Nagini is hissing in alarm beside him, having narrowly escaped being crushed.

“Gurk,” Abraxas manages, while his familiar squawks in alarm. Tom levers himself off of the other, smoothing down his pajamas to hide the faint tremor in his hands.

Abraxas looks like he really wants to ask, but he knows better to push Tom when Tom is in such an obviously stormy mood. “We’ve to hurry to the Great Hall if we don’t want to miss Wednesday Waffles,” he says. 

“Right,” Tom says. “Nagini, you’ll be alright staying in the dorms?”

Nagini hesitates, then bops his hand with her nose. “ _I’m strong. I’ll be fine.”_

* * *

Tom’s peripheral vision plays tricks on him over the next few weeks. He keeps catching flickers of green mist that disappear as soon as he turns his attention to them. His patience has worn thin to the point that his followers are avoiding his notice and intercepting the students hoping to ask him inane questions. They’re not as subtle as they think they are, but Tom doesn’t have the energy to be annoyed at them; he sleeps poorly every night, which he attributes to having to recover from the magical exhaustion of the ritual even though a niggling feeling in the back of his mind tells him that there must be more to it.

“I’m turning in early,” he tells Abraxas a week before winter break. 

As soon as he pulls his canopy shut, Nagini slithers up his arm and onto his shoulders, coiling loosely around him. Nagini, at least, has been tolerable

“Had a good day?” Tom asks, through a sudden bout of dizziness that passes quickly.

Nagini shifts into a more comfortable position. “ _I’m glad you’re back,”_ she says.

“I hope it wasn’t too boring, staying in the dorms.”

“Oh, it wasn’t.” Tom whirls around, jostling Nagini, to find Harry’s apparition once again at the foot of his bed; the sight of him opens the floodgates for Tom’s memories of the previous nights. Harry beams. “We kept each other company.”

Nagini shrinks into Tom.

“You,” Tom accuses, for lack of anything of more substance to say.

“You’ve been a little jumpy lately,” Harry remarks lightly. “Paranoia getting to you?”

“What do you want?”

“I want something impossible, so it doesn’t matter.” Harry rolls onto his stomach and props his chin in his hands, swinging his legs carelessly back and forth in the air. “What do _you_ want?”

“I want you to leave,” Tom says.

Harry drops his legs to the bed. “Oops. Can’t do that.” The damned green mist teases at the edges of Tom’s vision again, and Tom ignores it with a force of will.

“So what _can_ you do?”

“I thought you’d never ask!” Harry smiles. He dissolves into green mist; tendrils of him surge towards Tom and Nagini, passing easily through Tom’s instinctive shield charm. Tom’s gut drops-- and the mist hits him in the face, pouring into his mouth, crawling up his nose and filling his lungs until he’s leaking green through his pores.

Tom chokes. It’s not painful; when he opens his eyes cautiously, Nagini is hovering over him, worried.

“ _Tom? You were thrashing in your sleep.”_

An unnatural, horrible urge to smile overcomes Tom. His lips lift slightly at the corners against his will, and his body moves without his permission. He pushes himself up. “I’m fine, Nagini,” his body says, “good morning.”

He runs through the motions of the day as if in a dream; his body does all the things he normally does, but with foreign feelings flaring at inopportune moments. The green mist persists as a haze over his eyes, making everything seem as if it’s from a great distance.

The one thing out of the ordinary is that when he goes to the library, he looks up mentions of magical green mist. He finds a vague few sentences about manifestations of resentment, and he shuts the book with a huff, promptly forgetting about it.

He falls into bed at the end of the day and wakes up.

Tom pinches himself. The pain tells him that he’s awake for sure this time.

But why would Harry… possess him, and then do nothing with it? He could have sabotaged Tom’s plans, ruined Tom’s reputation, harmed Nagini or Tom himself, any number of suitable methods of revenge. In his position, Tom wouldn’t pass up such a chance. Harry even might’ve been able to do this ever since he first materialized in this ghost-like form.

So why didn’t he?

“Thanks for the magic, Tom!” Harry says with cheer, pulling Tom’s canopy open. Tom stares; he doesn’t bother to raise his wand. Harry pouts. “Aren’t you happy to see me? I can haunt you for real now-- when you’re asleep, but also when you’re awake! We can spend _all_ our time together.” He brightens. “And Nagini, too!” Green mist curls around him, playfully.

“Tom, you up? We’re about to go down for breakfast,” Abraxas calls, sticking his head into the dorms.

“Go without me,” Tom says. He skips breakfast to hurry to the library before class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrote part of this listening to lofi hiphop, which is entirely the wrong vibe, and harry's dialogue really shows it *facepalm* not putting in a joke every other sentence is more difficult than i thought
> 
> some super duper cool [snake sounds](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/68816/6-sssecrets-snake-sound-scientissst)!! i laughed so hard at the fart-defense because im actually a fifth grader
> 
> also, it really was wednesday on november 1st, 1944, according to google. yes, this is an unnecessary detail


	3. real haunted murder house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ocToBeR, i sAiD

"This is boring," Harry pouts. Nagini, who had refused to leave Tom's side despite her fear of Harry, or perhaps because of it, shrinks into Tom's lap. Harry's incorporeal head pops up through the pages of the book Tom is taking notes from. "Tom, you can't seriously mean to skip breakfast? You have to eat to function, you know."

Tom studiously ignores him, as he has for the entirety of the past hour.

"Really, you're just wasting your time... anything helpful would be in the Restricted Section. Classes are about to start soon, too," Harry notes, floating upwards through the book to whirl around and drape himself over Tom's back, chilling the skin he touches.

" _ Leave him alone, _ " Nagini hisses.

"And you," Harry addresses Nagini, who draws strength from Tom's body heat. "What's Tom done to make you so loyal to him? I don't get it."

" _ Why do you linger here? _ " Nagini counters.

"Certainly not out of loyalty," Harry dismisses her question. "I really am curious, though. Maybe he tied some sort of oath into the ritual; I wouldn't put that past him."

Nagini hisses, taking offense.

"There's the bell," Harry singsongs, and then to Tom, "You'd better pack quickly so you can convince Slughorn to sign your library pass, or you'll never realize that you truly can't get rid of me!"

Tom sets his jaw, shaking Harry off of his shoulders and gathering his things and Nagini. He has read before that vengeful spirits gain power with attention. However it rankles him, he won't respond.

"Rude," Harry complains, that green mist creeping in the corners of the halls while Tom hurries to class.

* * *

Harry continues to pester him.

"Why not just get a bezoar from the cabinet and call it a day?"

"Ouch. Not the insult, although that was pretty good, but the fact that I saw it in your diary and you must have been waiting to use it all this time."

"Nice bedhead. Almost as good as mine! I went over to take a look at the others, can you believe that Abraxas wakes up with his hair like that? I snooped on him and I still have no idea how. I think Nagini has the best bedhead out of all of us, though." At this, Tom reflexively glances at Nagini, only to remember that she's a snake. Harry erupts in laughter, and his fuzzy edges seem a little sharper afterwards.

* * *

"You're definitely doing that wrong. It works much better if you crush the beans with the flat of the blade instead of cutting them."

At this point, Tom has been sleeping poorly for a month and a half, Nagini's nerves are so frayed that she almost strangled him last night when Harry startled her, and Harry has latched onto their weaknesses like a Cerberus on the scent of blood. His methods generally lean towards unsolicited, useless advice and general pestering more than genuine trauma, but his persistence is still incredibly grating.

"You get a lot more juice too," Harry pesters. "Oi, you don't have to look so resentful. Why would I tell you to do something that'd turn out the worse for you?"

"I can think of a few reasons," Tom mutters, quietly enough that his classmates don't hear him talking to thin air.

"Squish the beans," Harry says with authority.

Tom automatically follows the instruction before he catches himself. To his astonishment, the sopophorous bean he's pressed with the blade produces twice the amount of juice as the one he'd cut, and yields easily.

"There! That wasn't so bad, was it?" Harry encourages him. "Now, if you put twice the amount the recipe calls for in the cauldron now, stir clockwise once, and add a pinch of that root over there, you can skip steps six through ten."

Tom considers Harry's bright, earnest smile. Steps six through ten are stabilizing agents... but so are steps ten through fourteen, really. Tom's grades are flawless, and he can afford a potential mistake.

As soon as he adds the sopophorous bean juice according to Harry's advice, his cauldron explodes. Harry's cackles follow him to the infirmary.

* * *

Tom can admit, lying in his bed that night, that he may have miscalculated by judging Harry's meek nature so impatiently. It hadn't occurred to him that a familiar who was supposed to be bonded to him for life would hide their base nature. He's never heard of a case like this before; it baffles him that it happened at all.

"Why did you hide?" Tom says, staring upwards.

"Oh, now he's talking to the canopy," Harry remarks. He's thumbing through Tom's diary, taking advantage of his newfound corporeality that's resulted from Tom's foolish moments of listening to him during the day. Tom isn't stupid enough to try and reclaim it.

Tom sighs, and Nagini almost rouses. Once she settles down again-- she hasn't been sleeping well either-- Tom tries again, "Why did you pretend to be weak in the beginning?"

"I didn't," Harry says flatly, shutting the book. He tosses it onto Tom's nightstand. When he doesn't volunteer more, Tom presses further.

"Your attitude is completely different now. Before, if I'd asked you to slice your own arm off, you would have, and you never disagreed with me on anything."

"Well, I did disagree," Harry is compelled to correct him, "I just didn't point it out."

"Why the ever not?" Tom is intrigued. "Familiars don't lie to their wizards."

"Look where honesty got me," Harry spits. "My first assignment, dead within a day. He was a good one, too. But I guess it doesn't have anything to do with honesty; it's really just me who's cursed. I tried to do the opposite with you as I did with Cedric, and look where that's gotten me."

"Familiars can be reassigned?" Tom wants to know. Harry turns away from him and doesn't respond to anything for the rest of the night, even as his form solidifies from all the attention that Tom is giving him.

* * *

"I kept thinking I was seeing things," Abraxas is murmuring to Rosier as Tom approaches them from behind in the Common Room. "But if you've seen flashes of it--  _ him--  _ too..."

"It's impossible," Rosier dismisses, curt. "Forget it." He turns his head and greets, "Riddle," as uncannily aware of his surroundings as usual.

"Ooh," Harry says, swooping off to someplace near. Tom ignores him with the ease of long practice, instead pinning his Head Boy badge to his robes and brushing past a startled Abraxas and Rosier to go on patrol.

* * *

Winter break takes forever to arrive. Tom continues ignoring Harry during the day and questioning him at night; something about the fact that Harry wasn’t given to  _ him  _ first feeds his interest. He doesn’t wonder whether he should regret the ritual, even as he gains respect for the strength of Harry’s spirit. Nagini maintains that he shouldn’t engage the vengeful spirit, and certainly avoid questioning him, but Tom tells her that he knows what he’s doing and she subsides reluctantly.

On the Hogwarts Express, Harry starts acting strangely. The tenth time he flickers in and out of Tom’s vision, checking Tom’s privacy wards on his train cabin, Tom snaps, “What are you doing?”

Harry doesn’t respond. Abraxas says tentatively, “My Lord?” and Tom realizes that he’d just addressed his dead familiar in front of his followers. 

“Out,” he commands, his forbidding expression staving off their curiosity. Once they are gone, he demands, “Well?”

“He might be planning something,” Nagini warns with trepidation. Tom waves her off.

Harry’s form flickers again, and then he solidifies in the cabin. “Sorry, did you say something to me?”

“I did.” Tom’s jaw clenches; he is loathe to repeat himself.

Nagini hisses, “What are you doing?”

Harry seems to consider his answer. “Honestly,” he muses, slowly, “I’m not sure.” He tilts his head, piercing Tom with a weighted gaze, and then plops down on a seat and glances out the window nonchalantly. “Nothing, now. I’m just going to enjoy my train ride.”

Tom doesn’t quite make it to seething, but it’s a close thing. “Tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter whether I tell you, you’ll find out on your own. You’re smart, right?” Harry challenges without even looking at him.

Tom grits his teeth, sits down, and distracts himself with a treatise on Urg the Unclean’s ideology in the eighteenth century goblin rebellion.

* * *

Even with Harry’s ominous behavior, Tom’s winter break proceeds as expected. He attends some networking events and works at Borgin and Burke’s occasionally to maintain his relations with Hepzibah Smith and a few others, though his own research into immortality takes up the brunt of his time. Tom concludes that there is nothing out of the ordinary and Harry must be trying to rile him up again, and thinks nothing more of it.

Then, the stranger occurrences begin.

Tom starts noticing them after Harry trails after him in a particularly conflicted mood on a Monday morning. When Tom demands answers from him, he graces Tom with a particular, pitying expression, and refuses to entertain any more conversation for the entire day. Tom later discovers, that evening, that his cutlery is not lined up perfectly in the kitchen drawer of the flat he’s rented.

“Did you do this?” Tom interrogates Harry. Harry denies it, even under the pressure of Tom’s magic, so Tom merely frowns and fixes it. Nagini is suspicious, but doesn’t dare say anything.

The next day, Tom wakes shivering to find his blanket in tatters. Squinting in the early morning gloom reveals that his bedroom has been shredded; debris is everywhere, and even his desk is split in two. The open window creaks as another gust of icy wind sweeps in.

“Fuck,” Tom says.

A few  _ reparo _ s later, everything is mostly back to normal, and Tom is ready to confront Harry, who’s been huddling in the corner and watching the proceedings with wide, guilt-filled eyes.

“I didn’t do it,” Harry says, preemptively.

Tom sneers. “There isn’t anyone else here who could have. You’re the only one, besides Nagini, with access to my wards. And Nagini wouldn’t do this.”

Harry shakes his head. Tom considers giving him leeway to defend himself, but he is too angry. No. He has to fix this situation, before Harry gets more ideas of revenge into his head and derails Tom’s plans. A soft approach would appeal to him best. 

“Harry,” he begins, and his change of character draws Harry’s attention instantly. Harry’s face is open, guileless, wearing his every emotion so foolishly. Gentle, Tom crouches an arm’s length away from Harry and dons a mask of sincerity. “We are both in a situation we don’t like.” Tom thinks quickly; the pieces that Harry’s given him over the past few months fall into place. “You’re stuck here until you’re reassigned as someone else’s familiar, but we don’t get along. It’s reasonable that you’d lash out in frustration. I’m frustrated too. I may not be happy about your episode, but I’m willing to forgive this, and the past few months, this once.”

Harry can’t meet Tom’s eyes. Instead, he focuses on a point above Tom’s left shoulder, presumably out of guilt.

“But we should work together to find a solution to this, Harry,” Tom says. “Stop this childish nonsense and we’ll both be happier.”

“You never listened to me,” Harry says, his voice small and wavering. 

“I’ll listen to you now.”

“I don’t know whether I hate you enough.” Harry finally meets Tom’s gaze. The way he says it is peculiar. His stare drifts to the side of Tom’s head again.

Tom turns his head to the side slightly to see what’s captured Harry’s attention. His instinctive  _ reducto  _ flies right through the figure who’d been looming over his side.

Tom scrambles backwards, forgoing elegance for efficiency. The figure passes straight through his shield spell, and as it nears again, Tom can make out its features: a strong nose, sharp cheekbones, hollows for eyes under its brow. It’s familiar.

It’s Tom Riddle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u can tell me if stuff doesnt make sense, but tbh i prob wont have a good answer for u bc im just glad i got this out :D [<\-- the face of struggling]

**Author's Note:**

> The writing server prompts:  
> Oct. 1st-3rd: Witches/witchery (ie: rituals, sacrifices, familiars, etc...)  
> Oct. 4th-6th: Possession  
> Oct. 7th-9th: Haunted Houses (fun playful ones or real haunted murder houses :scary_cat:)  
> Oct. 10th-12th: Ghosts/Spirits/Zombies (ie: typical Halloween monsters)  
> Oct. 13th-15th: Demon/Angel Deals  
> Oct. 16th-18th: Cursed Ancient Runes/Abandoned Cities  
> Oct.19th-21st: The real monsters are men  
> Oct. 22nd-24th: Curses (ie: Mummy Curses, Can't lie, can be as simple or as dark as you want)  
> Oct. 25th-27th: Psychological Horror  
> Oct. 28th-31st: trick or treating, costume parties, pumpkin carving etc..


End file.
